Entering September, MLB’s playoff picture is getting more clear.
Locked in division and wild-card races, the Yankees need more from shortstop Anthony Volpe.
Shohei Ohtani is easing back into action and is an X-factor for the Dodgers in October.
With Major League Baseball’s playoff field coming into greater focus each week, the final sprint through September may be missing some of its typical drama.
Yet plenty is at stake with division titles, first-round byes and worrisome issues for top contenders to clean up before the annual bracket challenge is at hand.
A little less than 30 games remain for most clubs, time enough for swing adjustments, a few more spins around the rotation and bullpen roles to gain or lose definition. USA TODAY Sports takes a look at six players crucial to their teams’ prospects of getting in – and staying in – the playoffs:
Anthony Volpe, Yankees SS
There are multiple authors of this uninspired Yankees season, but the club seemed to tacitly say the quiet part out loud in giving Volpe a two-day “mental reset” recently. And within that span, the club concocted a five-game winning streak to stabilize its hold on a playoff spot.
But this season has been mystifying for the once-Gold Glove shortstop, who outside of his 18 homers has been beaten badly at the plate (.207, 83 adjusted OPS) and brutal afield.
He ranks fourth-to-last among major league shortstops with -7 outs above average, which only partly illustrates how the cog of the Yankees’ defense has set a sloppy tone for the entire unit.
By season’s end, Volpe and the Yankees will reach a key checkpoint. He’ll have three years of service time under his belt, eligible for arbitration and halfway to free agency. Any significant revamp on either side of the ball will likely have to come in Volpe’s offseason. Yet how the Yankees and Volpe finish will frame their playoff prospects and his long-term stature in the organization.
Shohei Ohtani – the pitcher
It seemed unthinkable just a couple months ago, when the Dodgers were slow-walking Shohei Ohtani’s pitching ramp-up and an October of one- and two-inning bursts seemed likely.
But after striking out nine and maintaining his stuff over five innings of his last start, it’s only fair to wonder: Will we see The Full Ohtani in the postseason?
Ohtani threw a kitchen sink of seven pitches at the Cincinnati Reds in notching his first win of the season. Better yet, his four-seam fastball hovered at 98.2 mph, just 0.1 off his season average, while his sinker was at 96.6 mph, 0.4 above average.
And perhaps most important, Ohtani is learning to wean himself off his sweeper, a pitch he probably fell too in love with before succumbing to a second Tommy John surgery in 2023.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ pitching plans continue to stay weird. Where it once looked like they’d be back to spackle-and-Casparius postseason plans, the horses are aligning: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, followed by now-healthy Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. Clayton Kershaw has found the Fountain of Something at age 37. Youngster Emmet Sheehan is throwing the ball very well.
And then there’s the 6-foot-4 full-time DH, an enticing weapon come the playoffs. Should Ohtani continue taking steps forward in his last four or five starts, it would be hard to put a ceiling on what he may do through October.
Orion Kerkering, Phillies RHP
Autumn is nearing and Kerkering is a member of the Phillies bullpen and that means it’s spooky szn. And this Phillies squad seems even more extreme than the past two editions undone in October by the relief core: The club has at times resembled the class of the NL, yet its best-laid bullpen plans have long since gone awry.
Top lefty Jose Alvarado cannot pitch in the postseason due to a PED violation. Projected closer Jordan Romano has an 8.23 ERA and has made a mess of any role, though he’s now on the IL. Joe Ross has been DFA’d, Lou Trivino is here and the club hopes to wring a few clean innings from 40-year-old late-season mercenary David Robertson.
Yes, the club landed top-flight closer Jhoan Duran at the trade deadline. The lefty crew – Matt Strahm and Tanner Banks – is pretty solid. The overall depth will be buttressed by a starter – perhaps Taijuan Walker – dropping into the ‘pen for the playoffs. But in a Zack Wheeler-less universe, there will be more innings for relievers to cover.
And it would greatly aid the Phillies’ cause if Kerkering can punch his way up the pecking order.
His strikeout-walk ratio has fallen by almost half from his rookie year (4.35 to 2.32) and his WHIP has risen (1.08 to 1.33), as hitters have tracked his devastating sweeper more effectively. And while the Phillies have aimed to start him with clean innings, he’s failed this month when dropped into the fire, allowing six of nine inherited runners to score.
For a guy like Kerkering, things can turn on a dime. Teammates still swear by his stuff. He’s still striking out 10.1 batters per nine in his young career. He just needs to find it – and hopefully before the Phillies see a tightly-contested NLDS turn on their bullpen failings.
Riley Greene, Tigers LF
Make no mistake: Greene is a great player having a season worthy of his All-Star selection. And there are many reasons why the Tigers roared to a 59-34 start, only to go 19-23 since, most notably a pitching rotation that simply is what it is after ace Tarik Skubal.
But the Tigers’ slide in some ways mirrors Greene’s softer second half. He’s been almost metronomic from a power standpoint, his 34 longballs coming in bursts of six or seven each month of the season.
On the downside, he’s running away with the major league strikeout title with 168, coming at a 30.8% clip. Greene took a .284 average and .879 OPS into the All-Star break, but that was accompanied by a highly unsustainable .365 batting average on balls in play.
It’s all come back to earth some, with a .250 second-half BABIP and a .216/.284/.433 line. The body of work is framed by mid-range hard-hit percentages (45.1%) and average exit velocity (90 mph).
In short: Streaky dude. That doesn’t mean Greene can’t perk up to solidify the Tigers’ first-round bye – and take that into the playoffs.
Dylan Cease, Padres RHP
Left unspoken in the will-they-won’t-they trade discourse surrounding Cease and the Padres last month was the fact he hadn’t pitched particularly well this season. He took a 4.59 ERA into deadline week and has backtracked further, with a 5.72 ERA and 1.44 WHIP in six starts, failing to pitch past the fifth in five of them.
Remarkably, the Padres went 5-1 in those starts, but the stakes are rising for all parties. San Diego still has a shot at the NL West title, sitting two games behind the Dodgers. And they could easily land in any of the three wild-card slots, the difference between hosting or having to play, say, at the division-winning Dodgers in the first round.
Cease has his own motivations: He’s a free agent after this season and has a high-profile window to salvage this platform season with a strong stretch run and playoff performance. Further regression may create a quandary of accepting a shorter-term deal and trying to pump his value next season.
Andrew Vaughn, Brewers 1B
Within the game’s most unlikely story – Milwaukee Brewers, best team in baseball – resided an even more startling development:
Andrew Vaughn, indispensable cog.
The Brewers were good – 50-40, four games behind the Chicago Cubs – when they summoned Vaughn to the big club to fill in for injured Rhys Hoskins, days after acquiring him from the Chicago White Sox, where he was one of the worst hitters in the game.
Yet the .189/.214/.314 banjo hitter on the South Side suddenly blossomed into a slugger worthy of the No. 3 overall pick in 2019, as Vaughn was. The Brewers won their first nine games with him in the lineup and entered Friday 33-12 – with a 6 ½-game NL Central lead – since he joined the squad.
Late August, though, hasn’t been as kind: Milwaukee dropped its last two series, to sub-.500 teams, and Vaughn is in an 8-for-40 (.170) hole with just one extra-base hit in his last 13 games. Meanwhile, Hoskins has a .924 OPS in the first eight games of his rehab assignment for a thumb sprain and should return next week. The Brewers can do some mixing and matching to get both Vaughn and Hoskins in the lineup, such as depositing Christian Yelich in right field every so often. This final stretch of games, though, should determine just what they have in Vaughn – a summer curiosity or an October staple.